Authour: Jennifer Senior
Pages: 265
Summary:
Thousands of books have examined the effects
of parents on their children. In All Joy and No Fun, award-winning
journalist Jennifer Senior now asks: what are the effects of children on their parents?
In All Joy and No Fun,
award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior tries to tackle this question,
isolating and analyzing the many ways in which children reshape their
parents' lives, whether it's their marriages, their jobs, their habits,
their hobbies, their friendships, or their internal senses of self. She
argues that changes in the last half century have radically altered the
roles of today's mothers and fathers, making their mandates at once more
complex and far less clear.
Recruiting from a wide variety of
sources—in history, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, and
anthropology—she dissects both the timeless strains of parenting and the
ones that are brand new, and then brings her research to life in the
homes of ordinary parents around the country. The result is an
unforgettable series of family portraits, starting with parents of young
children and progressing to parents of teens. Through lively and
accessible storytelling, Senior follows these mothers and fathers as
they wrestle with some of parenthood's deepest vexations—and luxuriate
in some of its finest rewards.
Meticulously researched yet imbued with emotional intelligence, All Joy and No Fun
makes us reconsider some of our culture's most basic beliefs about
parenthood, all while illuminating the profound ways children deepen and
add purpose to our lives. By focusing on parenthood, rather than parenting, the book is original and essential reading for mothers and fathers of today—and tomorrow.
My Thoughts: I thought this book was fascinating, but that may be just because I am really interested in the ways our behavior is shaped and changed based on our home environment. I thought it was a really neat viewpoint to take - how do children effect their parents? There isn't exactly any parenting
advice in this book, more just information. And information always helps me to understand actions. There's more of an explanation of
why parents are often frustrated with their teenagers and what this can mean for parental relationships as well as other relationships in the family.
Senior also explores the development of the modern childhood. Childhood as we know it is relatively new on the scene. It didn't start to emerge until the 1940's. Up until then, children were primarily workers and people had them out of a sense of duty, but also to add more helping hands to the family. Now that we are able to control when we have children and how many we have, they have become more of a coveted commodity when they finally do arrive. Combine that with child labor laws, and children really don't have much of a purpose besides learning about the world around them. Parents are having to adjust their parenting techniques to an ever changing world, as technology evolves faster than we can keep up with it. Reading this book and seeing how the different families struggled with how to raise their children made me grateful for the gospel and how it gives us a framework for how families should be run and what moral values to teach our children. That's never going to go out of style.
If parenting and child development are your thing, I would definitely recommend this book to you. I thought it was just fascinating to read.
